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Archive: 2017 (52 Posts)

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Witness to History: Civil War Photographs

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

Last month’s offering in this series of posts about documentary and photojournalism collections noted how the Crimean War posed an opportunity—and enormous challenges—to British photographer Roger Fenton. Just six years later, a conflict on American soil, likewise, fueled Mathew Brady’s entrepreneurial ambitions, leading to some of the best known photographic documentation of the Civil War. …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Caught Our Eyes: It’s Electric!

Posted by: Julie Stoner

I am the first to admit that my knowledge of cars is rather limited. And perhaps like me, you thought electric cars were a relatively new phenomenon. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across the 1919 photograph below of a car being charged! Much to my astonishment, the first practical electric car was invented in …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Artists Capture the Hell Gate Bridge

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

One month ago, a blog post in Picture This featured photos of New York’s Hell Gate Bridge, marking the centennial of its dedication. Today, I turn my attention to prints and drawings of the Hell Gate in our holdings. These drawings and etchings enable us to look at the bridge through an artist’s eyes. American …

Hallie Quinn Brown. Photo by F. S. Biddle, between 1875 and ca. 1888. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.50302

Portraits of Nineteenth Century African American Women Activists Newly Available Online

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

The following is a guest post by Beverly Brannan, Curator of Photography, Prints & Photographs Division. African American women as well as men assumed civic responsibilities in the decades after the Civil War. William Henry Richards (1856-1941) was active in several organizations that promoted civil rights and civil liberties for African Americans at the end …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Witness to History: Roger Fenton’s Photographs of the Crimean War

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

The Library’s documentary and photojournalism collections reflect just how regularly photographers in each generation have taken up the challenge of providing a visual record of noteworthy events and scenes of the everyday.  This is the first in a series of blog posts that consider major photojournalism and documentary photo collections in the Prints and Photographs …

Double Take: Let’s Go Fly a Kite!

Posted by: Julie Stoner

While browsing through the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, the title of this photograph made me stop and take a closer look. Upon closer scrutiny, I realized that attached to the rope beneath the kite was a person! With my curiosity piqued, I decided to find out more about this man-flying contraption. An avid kite …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Springing Forward into Daylight Saving Time

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Most of the United States will “spring forward” this weekend, as we enter Daylight Saving Time at 2:00 a.m. – which will immediately become 3:00 a.m. – Sunday morning. Many of us have never known a time when we didn’t go through the biannual ritual of springing forward an hour in the spring, and falling …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Bridges of New York: Spanning the Hell Gate

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

New York City is a city of landmark bridges. One hundred years ago this month, Hell Gate Bridge joined the New York skyline as the longest steel arch bridge in the world. The engineering feat attracted the attention of news photographers, as high over the treacherous strait known as Hell Gate in the East River, …